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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A commission of minority community members and criminal justice officials formed to keep racial and ethnic inequalities out of the justice system has no money, has not met for more than a year and has an uncertain future.
The Commission on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice System was to help agencies implement the recommendations of a task force that spent years analyzing the system and devising a plan to promote fairness.
But for two years now, the Legislature has declined to fund it.
"It's sort of like when the doctor tells someone, 'Take this prescription for an antibiotic for two weeks,' and after five days they stop," said Court of Appeals Judge William Thorne, a commission co-chairman.
The Salt Lake Tribune said its review found more than half of the task force recommendations have not been fully implemented.
The newspaper said recommendations not fully implemented included sing a standard tool to screen all law-enforcement applicants for predisposition toward racial and ethnic bias behaviors, lightening public defender caseloads and creating a statewide appellate public defender's office.
It said another example was collecting of the race and ethnicity of crime victims for future studies, and adult studies on sentencing that include racial components.
Most agencies cited minority recruitment and retention as their biggest challenge.
Among Utah's five largest police departments, minorities account for between 6 and 14 percent of all officers, 12 percent of all courts employees and 4 percent of Utah Department of Corrections employees.
State Rep. Duane Bourdeaux, D-Salt Lake City sponsored a bill this year to bring the group under the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice with $120,000 in funding. The bill failed.
"In this context of 'do-everything-we-can-not-to-grow-government,' it is not particularly appealing to certain legislators," said CCJJ Director Michele Christiansen. "It hasn't yet ranked high enough on the subappropriations list for funding."
Some say there might be another way to keep the commission's spirit alive by making it into a subcommittee of CCJJ with no new funding.
"I think we can be positive about it because it is a solvable problem with willing participants," said Paul Boyden, director of the Statewide Association of Prosecutors and a former commission member. "If the Legislature is concerned about more government, we can come up with a leaner way to do it."
Ron Stallworth. a Black Advisory Council member who retired from the Department of Public Safety in November and participated in a task force subcommittee years ago, said letting the commission die is an insult.
"That group needs to be resurrected, it never should have been allowed to die," he said. "The minority population is growing all the time, and the population needs to have it. To me ... it's another example that we will give them lip service but not serious attention unless we have to."
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
